There were three things I was particularly dismayed at in the article. One was the stat on the first page,

“To critics it represents a foolhardy repudiation of medical advances that cut infant and maternal mortality in the United States by 90 percent during the 20th century.”

This may very well be, but then why is it we have one of the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world? Of 43 countries, we rank 41 as of last year. That stat went up from the mid twenties in just a year! Don’t tell me freebirthing is foolhardy when with all of our medical advances, we still have nearly the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. Take a look at the trends in the countries ahead of us. A great portion of them have the common practice of homebirth. Some of the countries have made it illegal to freebirth, so it is done in secret or as an “oops, the midwife didn’t get here in time,” kind of scenario.

The second thing that bothered me we the quote by Judy Norsigian, Executive Director of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” by the Boston Women’s Health Collective. She said,

“Obviously we don’t think unassisted home birth is a good idea,”

she went on as did the article to say,

“”There are deaths from these births that I personally know of,” Norsigian said, most of which are preventable and resulted from the failure to recognize clear-cut warning signs: decelerations in the fetal heart rate, indicating respiratory distress; a breech position, in which the baby is sideways or feet first; and umbilical cord abnormalities, which can lead to brain damage or stillbirth.”

Firstly, I am upset by this because OBOS is the one book I believe every womon should own starting just before she bleeds for the first time. It is a book that helps wimmin understand their bodies without the condemning gobbeldygook that we tend to get from health care professionals and from societies misalligned ideals regarding the body of a womon. It is dismaying that they don’t seem to deem it as an option for wimmin seeking to take further control back over their own bodies. It’s very disheartening on a feminist front, in my opinion. Secondly, the people that choose freebirth are not uneducated and misinformed. They are very knowledgeable about the human body pregnant and non-pregnant, about the physiology of conception, pregnancy, labor and birth. they have read EXTENSIVELY regarding the warnign signs of complications, and are prepared for such. It often seems as though freebirthers are made out to be crackpots who are balking tradition (which is only about 100 years old, out of how long humanity has been here) for the sake of being black sheep. that is simply not the case. We do these things for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost of which is what is best for our bodies, our babies and our families.

The third thing that struck my nerves on this article (like I said, though, it is really more of the same nonesense regarding how ‘dangerous’ freebirthing is,) was the quote by Mairi Breen Rothman a CNM,

“But a woman having a baby is not in a position to be monitoring herself.”

I seriously could feel my brain itching. How and when the hell did the feminist movement go backwards? How about we phrase it this way: “A womon is not in any position to be choosing her elected officials,” or how about this one, “a womon is not in any position to know how to have an orgasm,” or this, “a womon is in no position to choose who she will be married to,” ad naseum. A womon is a womon is a womon, plain and simple. How dare anyone tell me, or any womon, what she should be doing with her body in any state. Next thing you know, abortions will be illegal again, because what position does a pregnant womon have that she should be able to make the decisions regarding her body and the life it is carrying! Ridiculous.

Go ahead and read the article…and read the millions more like it that further indict wimmin for having malfunctioning bodies incapable of conceiving, bearing and birthing babies without continuous monitoring by the ‘professionals’.